Short-term: some sort of low-key soldering / project kit for new members or people without projects on open make day. We could crank out a half-dozen boards and buy all the components, and then make them available.

Long-term: an awesome robot. Fire a bonus. I loved Gary's idea of everyone taking a basic control board and just doing whatever weird thing comes to mind.

The problem with these boards is that they are getting almost to be overkill on features with little improvement in functionality. Their best feature is flexibility in that they can be programmed for ONE small application.

These boards would be maxed out doing math for a GPS. They would be great if ALL they did was read a GPS and keep track of a location. But try to do more at the same time (like communicate the location over a zigbee network) and you would bump up against hardware limitations.

I definitely like Jon's idea of planning out simple "beginners kits" that we can order bulk parts for. If we can source the parts at low enough cost we can make them available to potential members at a low cost, yet still be able to mark up the price as a form of fundraiser. Something like this would be handy for recruiting members, or for events and whatnot. We could then use any revenue from this, along with member donations or other fund-raising opportunities, to fund the building of more impressive and elaborate group projects, or fund the purchase of equipment to be shared amongst members.

as for group projects, I'm a big fan of the Autonomous Zepplin idea, maybe an autonomous quadrotor, or even just a super awesome robot that shoots fire.

When the ECE rover was designed we got a $75K grant to cover the final design and cost of the initial kits. To make something cheap it either has to be cheap or you have to buy in large quantity. Making a complete kit is difficult especially when there are already lots of cheap low cost kits already.

So we could build the "box" and people could connect it to what they want controlling the cost. There has to be enough for it to be a real robot, with a lot of room for flexibility. Refer to the block diagram on the Wiki.

Then we could produce kits that are not expensive AND that are useful.

Here is another great "design methodology". One that is open source too. MegaSquirt - DIY Fuel Injection Controller
Look at the bottom of the page for companies that sell assembled units or kits when the whole kit is only $140.

an autonomous sailboat is an interesting idea... that would involve a whole slew of skills to make the boat work. sewing, woodworking, physics, electronics....
I really like it! the only problem I see is finding a body of water to test it on. If you are thinking of something relatively small scale I could see this being feasibly tested in one of the local ponds.